Beautiful Maladies (The Island Years)

Compilation of the best tracks from his 3 Island releases. Even if Tom Waits had ended his career in the early 1980s, before he moved over to Island Records, he would still be regarded as a mighty member of the singer/songwriter elite. This makes it all the more impressive that he completely re-invented himself after switching labels in the mid-'80s, most notably with the Holy Trinity of SWORDFISHTROMBONES, RAIN DOGS, and FRANK'S WILD YEARS. On these albums, whose highlights make up the meat of BEAUTIFUL MALADIES, Waits abandoned the jazzy, piano-bound beatnik persona he'd carefully maintained throughout the '70s. Instead he created a groundbreaking patchwork that encompassed polkas, blues, deranged cabaret, the avant-garde, and more, in a funhouse-mirror reflection of Howlin' Wolf, Kurt Weill, and Harry Partch. The fact that he'd lost none of his masterful songwriting acumen in the process insured that Waits's Island recordings, so definitively represented here, would be his lasting legacy.